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Fucking Shadows

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[UNSOLVED]Fucking Shadows

hey guys i realy had this fucking problem with the shadows
how to remove cliffs shadows?i used the raise tool and made a very tall cliff then the cliif's shadows is to big..i saw on other map e.g CW's diablo map
his cliff doesnt hav shadows
and the shadows are ugly
iv even calculate shadows but it still there
pls any experienced terrainers pls help me ++REPUTATION of course

ima post screenshot wait a min...
 
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Level 9
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wait u shud see this
184257-albums4036-picture38941.jpg

in diablo i know they r shadows but not this much and ugly
or is this my terraining skill prob?
im realy still learning in making terrains
 
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u mean what kind of dummy?everysepll has a dummy
but i din place it there i use trigger...
shit im realy fucked by this shadow..i have no mood to terrain till this fixed.
and i calculated the shadows and the result is in the image
 
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i hav start locations far away about 20000 units away
is that posible?
yes ur right those shadws doesnt look normal
 
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Well, unless he abused the noise tool, I believe there's a dummy mistake, like the rest of you.

Blood, where is the location of that screenshot? Would I be right in assuming it's about the center of the map?
 
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nope its in the base i hav dummy unit in the center of the map no worry about it its locust
but in the team1 base hell no dummy rite there

EDIT:i realy hope someone can solve this for me im realy f by this and ruining my flow
 
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Well, destroys my idea.

But it's still probably a dummy unit issue.

Is that a pic in-game, or is that a pic in the WE?
 
Level 9
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its a pic in WE...how to check if there is a dummy?
i dont remember placing any dummy there

the shadows does appear ingame thats what realy analy raped me
 
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if it is WE try going to unit pallet, selecting that splotted area with the select tool. repeat with doodads and Destructibles to see if its something misplaced.
 
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For your information..
i havent put any doodads yet thats why im curious...
i still havent found the solution
 
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I mentioned destructables, Ghost. :D

If none of that worked. Next thing I would try is "Smooth" tool on the affected area.
 
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but it gonna take sometime with 12kb/ps connection because im updating my anitvirus..but ill try to post it A.S.A.P
 
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LOL. That certainly is unique, indeed, my friend.

Pastebin is your friend.

if it wasn't so freakin' cold in my room, I'd pastebin a map so I could work on it on my laptop. Which, I may end up doing when i grab my charger, soon. lol.
 
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Calculate shadows and save? o.o

Probably this.

That's not normal. No cliffs have that much shadow.

They do after the Calculate shadows and save has been used.

...i calculated the shadows and the result is in the image

Just make sure you have a perfectly bare, flat terrain (all same level and plateued; any raise/lower sections will have shadows added). Make sure you have the grid on to make sure everything's level. The tool also adds shadows to non-destructible doodads (i.e. archways and pillars), so make sure non of those are present on the map. Cliffs aren't the only thing that gett shadows added.

The first map re-terrain I did had the same problem and shadows that looked just like the ones you posted in the 3rd post, which appears to have a large hill to the right of it.
Depending on the size of your map it could take a while to ensure you don't have any shadows left.

//\\oo//\\
 

Dr Super Good

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Replace the shadow map file inside your map with a blank one of the same demensions. It must be the same size but just blank or your map will fail to load.

For example you could make a dummy flat map of the same physical size of your map and then copy its shadow map file into your map via an MPQ editor to reset your shadows.

I advise keeping clear of the calculate shadows tool as that generates the ugly shadow maps.

So why does this happen you may be asking? Well WC3 was desiged for DirectX 7 orignally (although it was released using DirectX 8). The result is that there was no facility for realtime shadow generation during the development of the game. Shadows were still common in 3D games so to make them they decided to use a mapping approach whereby buildings and the terrain use pregenerated realistic shadows which then got mapped onto an overlay layer for the terrain. This resulted in realistic shading to the user and suited the games orignal purpose perfectly. Units on the other hand, due to rotation, could not use that sort of shading so instead they just place a blod shadow for units offset in a semi realistic way to give the appearence of some shading instead of no shading. Due to all shadows being pregenerated, the light direction had to be fixed so the model shading from the light system matched the shadow images and offsets.

The problem is that the univeral shadow map is low resolution when ingame so small terrain details can cause disproportional shadows covering a large area. Additionally the generation algerthims ignore some terrain objects and as such many objects which should cast huge terrain shadows do not. Additionally for environments with restricted light (like a dungeon), the shadows make no sense. Additionally it does not auto update cause the shadow generation is software computed (I can only guess for the slowness of it) so you can have anomilies like the screenshot where now flat terrain still has shadows from a previously existing hill until recalculation. Due to blizzard's American approach to editing they fail to provide low level interaction with the shadow map (via a brush) nor the ability to discard shadow data for when the results of auto generation are ugly.

Modern games like SC2 do not suffer from this. They use real time shadow generation (DX9+ via depth buffers and special opperations) so everything from units to terrain cast shadows on geometry at a resolution of 1024*1024 (maybe more on extreem). Even as you raise and lower terrain you can see the geometry starting to cast shadows. Additionally, due to the dynamic nature of the algerthim, you can alter the directional source of shadows as well as the shading of units. You can even change them ingame in SC2 so you can have shadows getting longer as night starts to fall until everything is in shadow.
 
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@DSG ur right iv been calculating shadows too often maybe that is the problem

but iv got one question how to replace shadow file?do i need mpq extractor?
u mean same size eg my map is 128x 128 the blank map must be 128x128?

please tell how to do it step by step thank you very much
 

Dr Super Good

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...
Create a blank map of the same size of your current map (with bugged shadows) and do not calcullate shadow maps.
Use an mpq editor to extract the "war3map.shd" file from your saved blank map.
Delete the existing "war3map.shd" from your map with the bugged shadow map.
Import the blank "war3map.shd" you extracted from a blank map into your bugged map.
Compact your map's archive (if possible) and then open the map in the editor.
The map should now no longer have bugged shadows.

It is ofcourse advisable to make a backup of your map before doing this as MPQ editors are often not reliable and can curropt your map (in which case restore the map from backup and try again).
 
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ok ill try it but i need to download the mpq extractor first

@gangspear way too much work to remake dude 4months of work..=D
 
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